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Hizashi kept trying to share his umbrella as they walked home from school, half-jogging to stay in step with Shouta even as he tried to sidle out from under it. Shouta walked directly through some deep puddles to shake him but Hizashi kept pace with him, grimacing as his shoes flooded and the rainwater wicked up his pant legs to the knee. Shouta gritted his teeth in a flash of white-hot annoyance. He stalked away from Hizashi on the last few seconds of a crossing signal, stranding him and his stupid umbrella on the other side of the street. Even that only gained him a few moments alone in the downpour. Practically right on his heels he heard Hizashi shouting apologies to drivers as he scurried through traffic to catch up; a moment later the umbrella had returned. Shouta took a sharp left down a side street, shoving past Hizashi as he did. Hizashi took a moment to recover but soon enough he was back at Shouta’s side.
Shouta felt the last brittle strands on his patience snap like an overtuned piano wire in his chest. If there was one person he’d counted on to understand where he was right now, it was Hizashi. Shouta didn’t want people to be soft and wary and kind to him; he didn’t want to be coddled and kept warm and dry. He wanted to storm and stalk and bulldoze his way through the rain until he looked as bad on the outside as he felt on the inside. He wanted to shove it into everyone’s performative, platitude-spewing faces and make them see that things were stupid and bad and would be that way forever because of him, no matter how much they patted him on the head and told him things would turn around eventually. He wheeled on Hizashi, hands balled into fists. Before Hizashi could react, Shouta snatched the umbrella from him, closed it, and shoved it hard into his chest. Hizashi stared at him, mouth hanging open in shock, but Shouta was already blazing past him back towards the main street.
“I lost him too you know!” The sudden whipcrack of Hizashi’s voice made Shouta stop short. He turned to see Hizashi still standing where he’d left him, head down and hands shaking as he gripped his umbrella in white-knuckle fists.
“I decided I was okay with always being your second choice a long time ago, because at least then I was still a choice,” Hizashi went on. His voice was choked and raw in a way Shouta had never heard from him before. “But now you’re too busy being an asshole to even notice I exist!” Hizashi stormed over as he spoke, his voice climbing to a furious bark. “You just mope around with your head up your ass , leaving me behind like you don’t even care! ” He punctuated his words by shoving Shouta in the chest again and again, sending him stumbling back a step each time. Shouta smirked bitterly. It sounded like Hizashi was finally realizing the trash he’d spent so long trying to elevate was just holding him back. Good for him. He turned away, ready to leave Hizashi to follow the thought through to the inevitable conclusion of Shouta’s worthlessness. Hizashi grabbed him hard by the jacket lapels, shaking him sharply and screaming, “Look at me!”
Shouta was so startled by the jolt that he did. At first he just felt confused by what he saw. Hizashi’s face was flushed and blotchy, the dark hollowness of his eyes made all the more obvious by the tears streaming down his face. Hizashi was genuinely, blazingly angry; worse still, he was crying . None of this made any sense. Hizashi didn’t get mad; he got salty and caustic and hilariously petty but he never seemed to have it in him to get mad . Likewise he might squeeze out a few tears for a cute baby animal video or when something especially sappy happened in a Disney movie, but never in choked, breathless sobs like this. Shouta stared, frozen, while his numb brain scrambled for a reaction.
The fight seemed to go out of Hizashi as their eyes finally met. He slumped forward onto Shouta’s neck, fists still gripping his jacket so hard Shouta could feel every knuckle straining. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do this by myself. Please. I need you, Shouta, please… ”
This was wrong. No one needed him, he was the reason everything fell apart. No one should think the person who broke them this badly would be the one to fix things again. Shouta didn’t think he
could
fix anything now. Even so, some part of him wanted to try if it meant Hizashi wouldn’t hurt like this anymore. Slowly Shouta lifted his arms and wrapped them around Hizashi’s shoulders. Hizashi’s arms snapped tight around his ribs, fingers digging into his back so hard it was almost painful. Shouta shut his eyes tight, squeezing Hizashi just as hard as he took what felt like his first full breath in weeks.
They went to Hizashi’s apartment because it was closer and the rain was coming down harder than ever. Hizashi’s mother didn’t ask why the two of them showed by raw-eyed and soaked to the skin. Instead she just ushered them both into warm baths and dry clothes in an affectionately exasperated tone that brooked no argument. Shouta went first, drifting in the hot water until the prickling feeling on his skin stopped. Everything that had been moving double-time seemed to have boomeranged around to a snail’s pace instead. Being angry had at least felt like he’d been doing something, even if it had mostly just been burning his life down and salting the earth behind him. Now his warpath had been brought to a screeching halt and the sludgy inertia of sadness was biting at his heels.
When he emerged Hizashi’s mother descended on him almost immediately with still more practical comforts. She tucked a large knitted blanket around his shoulders before wrapping him in a hug almost as bone-crushing as her son’s and kissing the top of his head. It felt pleasantly suffocating as she squeezed him so tightly he felt his back pop; what felt even better was the way she just pushed a mug of very strong tea with too much milk and honey into his hands and sat him down on the couch without any of the thousand iterations of commiserating with his pain he’d grown so rabidly sick of. She repeated the ritual with Hizashi when he came out of the bathroom, telling them she would be working on emails in her room if they needed her before leaving them alone.
Hizashi dumped himself awkwardly onto the other end of the couch from Shouta. The distance between them felt immeasurable and alien. Shouta glanced at Hizashi out of the corner of his eye. The other boy was staring down into his tea without seeing it, wet hair sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck. He looked as lost and broken and small as Shouta felt now. A sharp squirm of guilt dug its way into the pit of Shouta’s stomach and begged him to just leave before he made things worse. He took a deep breath and stood his ground against himself.
“I’m sorry, Hizashi,” Shouta said quietly. He saw Hizashi flinch in his peripheral vision, hands flexing around his mug.
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Hizashi replied with a forced chuckle that sounded more like he was trying not to throw up. “I know you’re going through...stuff. I, uh. Got kind of vicious back there. Sorry.”
“You were right, though,” Shouta said. “I’ve been too caught up in myself to pay attention to anyone else. That’s not fair. I’m sorry.” He frowned, trying to think of a good way to phrase the rest. “What you said before, about always being my second choice,” he began.
“We don’t have to get into that,” Hizashi jumped in quickly. “I-I was just mad, saying shit.” He bit his lip, shaking his head. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It obviously is,” Shouta said, a little more sharply than he’d really meant it. This seemed so patently Hizashi, playing off his feelings to keep things from getting too serious. Shouta wondered how long this had been boiling below the surface. “Even if it isn’t,” he said, starting again, “maybe it should be?” Hizashi looked over at him, surprised. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I always thought it was all three of us in it together. Equally. I’m sorry I made you feel like that wasn’t true.” Shouta sighed, shaking his head. “I didn’t realize how messed up things were already. Too far up my own ass I guess.”
To his surprise Hizashi snorted out a weak laugh at that. He breached the unspoken divide between them, scooting over to lean just a little bit too much into Shouta’s personal space. It was normal for him, but normal felt like a miracle right now. “Don’t beat yourself up too much,” Hizashi said, elbowing him gently in the side. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t spend half your life stuck in your own head.”
Shouta rolled his eyes but deep down he felt comforted by the backhanded compliment. “Can I tell you something stupid?” he asked.
“Always.”
“Honestly, I. I always kind of thought I was the one who didn’t fit,” Shouta admitted quietly. “I’m just okay at school, and I’m not good with people or with my Quirk yet like you and--like the two of you are,” he said. He corrected himself before he said the name out loud; just the thought of it still felt like swallowing broken glass. He shook his head. “How the hell did we manage to have two black sheep in a group of three people?” he wondered dryly.
Hizashi barked out a sharp but genuine laugh. “And somehow it’s us oddballs who are left,” he agreed. “Figure that one out.” He gave a theatrical broad shrug, then slumped back down onto the couch. The moment of levity seemed to hang in brittle shards around them. It felt wrong to be joking around, but it felt worse being sad. Shouta leaned into Hizashi’s side, resting his head on Hizashi’s shoulder.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he admitted in a shaky whisper.
“Me neither,” Hizashi murmured. “Guess we have to figure it out on our own.”
Shouta felt a warm trepidation at the word “we”. “Are you sure you still want to saddle yourself with me?” he asked.
Hizashi snorted, his mouth quirking into a ghost of his usual broad grin.“Uh, duh . You’re never getting rid of me now.”
“Promise?” The question felt childish and Shouta immediately regretted letting it slip out. Hizashi took his hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing tight.
“Yeah. I promise."